1. Chimpanzee Superspies

Toddlers are fifty percent supergenius and fifty percent drunken orangutan — sometimes they’re brilliant little robots, other times they’re the family Roomba that someone spilled wine on last year and it hasn’t worked right since. The problem is: you don’t know which version you’re getting, so it’s nearly impossible to prepare. Will you get the version that sprints into the room and runs face-first into a chair? Will you get the toddler who knows how to design a catapult to fling herself to the top level of the pantry where she can hunker down and eat all your M&Ms while you roam the house looking for her? You have to approach each task, each situation, each room by recognizing that it will be under attack by either a) a flailing, pee-soaked cokehead or b) a tiny version of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. We underestimate and overestimate toddlers in equal measure.

2. Deeply Inane Conversations

You will find yourself locked in the dumbest and/or strangest conversations when conversing with a toddler. You have to be ready for that. You have to be prepared to talk about trucks and puppies and can puppies drive trucks and whether or not you like pretzels and if he’s supposed to like pretzels — oh, god, and then they start asking why about things, and then it’s just that one question, why, all the way down. It’s an infinite ladder, the rungs made of why, why, why. You’ll be sitting there thinking, this is literally the dumbest conversation I have ever had, and I once had a two-hour discussion about whether or not Darth Vader takes shits, and where he takes these shits and what do they look like. But you have to realize: this is how toddlers manifest language. This is how they learn about things. These kinds of goofy-doofy discussions are how they develop opinions and test your opinions in turn. You gotta be present and engage.

3. Neck-Punched By Unexpected Profundity

Sometimes you’ll be wrapped up in one of these conversations and then out of nowhere this meteor of toddlerian profundity will tear a hole in the atmosphere and hit you right between the feels. I was sitting in our son’s room the other night and he was crashing trucks into one another and then he was narrating these car crashes (angrily demanding that I turn my head and watch this toy-level snuff film again and again), and suddenly he stops crashing them and the trucks start to talk. And the trucks are unfailingly polite to each other — “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, how are you?” “Let’s go get cake and ice cream together.” And I’m like, aww, hey, cute. But then the toddler looks to me and says: “Friends go get ice cream and cake together. Friends make you not sad anymore. Sometimes I’m sad. But then I know that friends will make it all better. It’s good to be happy. It’s good to have friends.” And I’m like, blink blink blink, we’re we just talking about poop five minutes ago? Did you just school me on a lesson that many adults could stand to learn? You’re not even three. Dang, kid.

4. Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat

Can I have a snack now? Can I have a snack now? Can I have a snack now? Can I have a snack now? Can I have a snack now? Can I have a snack now? Now now now snack snack snack. CAN I HAVE A SNACK NOW SNACK NOW PLEASE SNACK CAN I SNACK I WANT A SNACK MOMMY MOMMY DADDY SNACK AAAAAAAH SNACK. There. Now you know what it’s like.

5. La La La La Rah Rah Rah Rah Gibber Jabber Wail

Sometimes it’s not about the Department of Redundancy Department — sometimes toddlers are just holy shit loud. They run around babble-shrieking, clanging toys together and singing some discordant song that you’re pretty sure will raise the Elder Ones from their brine-born city underneath the dark waves of forgotten oceans. You’ll go into the playroom and they’ll have a bullhorn and a drumset that you don’t remember them ever having before this moment. They have poor impulse control and absolutely no volume control. The trick is, it’s not always about the constant level. It’s about the unexpected decibel spikes. Out of nowhere they’ll go to Volume 11 on a simple question — “I like that color oh look flowers I HAVE TO POOP NOW CAN WE GO POOP?” — and you’re like, jeez, kid, we’re at a funeral, could you use your inside voice? Unfortunately, toddlers have the inside voice of a running wood chipper.

6. Parental Translator

I’ve noticed that if I’m not the parent of a particular toddler — and as it turns out I am not parent to most of them — I have often no idea what the fuck that child is saying. It’s all gobba-gooby brrbt can I have wuff and go get a spang and, nope, seriously, no idea. But my kid? I nearly always know what my own toddler is talking about, and when I don’t know, my wife does. We have parsed his alien dialect. Because we live with him. We’ve been privy to his language development since it was little grunts and squeaks. We know what every mouth-fart and burble-bobble means. He is the cipher, and we are those who have cracked it. But don’t feel bad if you meet a toddler and you have seriously no idea what that kid is talking about. They’re working through it.

7. They Are Immune To Privacy

Their shame modules have not yet been successfully programmed by the many degradations of life, and so if you are near a toddler and intend to, ohhh, I dunno, pee, poop, take a shower, have sex, watch Vampire Diaries naked, then please believe me that the toddler doesn’t know or care and will happily barge in and ask you questions. They’re not voyeurs; they’re just trying to figure out how all of existence works. From flushing a toilet to expressing your dog’s anal glands — they’re observers and actors in even the most uncomfortable of life’s moments.

8. They Love You Unconditionally

They love you. They love you so hard. Adults have conditional love — “I love you BECAUSE, I love you WHEN, I won’t love you IF.” Kids have that canine sense of love: just unabashed, wide open, radiating love. (And, by the way, if you’re the parent, you’ll have it for them, too.) It will shock you and melt even the grungiest, muddiest iceball of a heart.

9. They Also Love That Bear, Truck, Sock, Whisk, Unconditionally

They love all kinds of things with an intensity befitting someone on a high-octane hallucinogen. They will love a blanket, a pet, a teddy bear, a Lightning McQueen sticker, a houseplant, a half-eaten Cheezit they found under the recliner. On the one hand, it’ll make you feel a little more common. On the other, it’s wonderful to watch just how completely capable they are of finding love and joy in all the world around them.

10. You’re Useful To Them Until You’re Not

All that love is well and good, but just the same, your use to them will run out. You’ll get them orange juice and the seven specific toys they want. You’ll turn on the show they love (“Law & Order: SVU? Whatever, kid, sure.”). And then they’ll look at you with this dismissive, game-over gaze that reminds you how you’ve expired like old milk. Your value to them is now gone. You are dismissed, giant human. Shoo. Hurry off. Go do some grown-up bullshit.

11. You = Trampoline / Ladder / Puppet

Part of your value to a toddler is as a physical tool for amusement and opportunity. They will jump on you because you are soft and bouncy. They will climb on you because you make a clumsy, but capable, ladder. You’re basically a huge puppet and the toddler is the one yanking all your strings. NOW DANCE, MONKEY, DANCE. Oh, be advised: they will hella kick you in the crotch, so you should put a lunch tray or chafing dish down your pants for armoring purposes. (Our tot uses my crotch as a step-stool to climb on top of my head. So that’s fun.)

12. You Are Both Performer And Audience

Your job, as noted above, is to entertain. Thing is, the table flips here without warning — one minute they’re happily chugging along with the Play-Doh but suddenly it’s all on you to enterain them. “BUILD ME A ROBOT, LEST I TANTRUM.” They are like Roman Emperors in this: clapping their hands, demanding you do as they say lest there be grim, diaper-based consequences.

13. Sometimes They’re You

Parents or relatives of a toddler will occasionally be disturbed by some intimately recognizable aspect appearing out of nowhere. You’ll hear your own laugh echoed back. Or a phrase you didn’t even realize was unique to you. They’ll express a preference that no one else shares — “Hey, we both really like the epic Bruce Willis failure that was the film Hudson Hawk!” It’s this weird thing where you wonder if there’s more to DNA than you think, or if you’ve just been giving off unintentional psychic signals.

14. And Sometimes They’re Unrecognizable

Our son has recently taken to pushing away the meat on his plate in favor of the vegetables. Broccoli. Lima beans. Mushrooms. Kale. “Don’t you want your chicken fingers?” we’ll ask and he’ll be like, “No, I’m fine, I’m just eating my peas.” And then my wife and I look at each other and the unspoken communique traveling within our gazes is, WE HAVE NO SON. THIS IS NOT OUR CHILD. SOME FAERIE STOLE HIM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND LEFT US WITH THIS BROCCOLI-EATING ANIMATED BUNDLE OF OF TWIGS AND POSSUM TAILS. Sometimes it’s like, what is happening? Who is this kid? Where did he get these things? Then you start to get it: ohhh, they’re their own little humans, aren’t they?

15. It’s Like Someone Gave Them Sodium Pentathol

Just last night, I put dinner on the table and my son took one good look at the hot dogs and said, “Those look like poop.” And, admittedly, they did — the hot dogs took on that crispy, wrinkly, brown-black you get from having them on the grill, and sure enough, they had a turd-like quality to them. Toddlers are honest to an almost sociopathic degree. They will tell you when you smell weird, when your joke wasn’t funny, when their love for you has died because you did not buy them that $4000 LEGO set (“IT’S A FULLY-FUNCTIONAL TIE-FIGHTER AND I WANNIT AGGGH”). But you can use this to your advantage, too, because toddlers are piss-poor liars. They lie, all you have to do is ask them: “Are you lying?” And they’re like, “Yes.” Ha-ha, busted, tiny human.

16. You Will Learn To Fear Silence

In theory, you welcome silence in Toddler World. You want it to mean that things are peaceful. That the proto-human is in on the floor of the playroom, quietly pushing two trucks around, or gently architecting the Canterbury Cathedral out of Megabloks. But that’s not what’s happening. When things go quiet, it’s the tide being sucked out to sea before the tsunami hits. It’s all the rats fleeing Los Angeles just before the giant earthquake swallows everything. When all goes quiet in Toddler World, do not hesitate. Make haste. For you will surely come upon your toddler performing a task that demands adult interruption: climbing into the ductwork, constructing his own flamethrower, summoning poltergeists with a Ouija board made of Duplo blocks.

17. Highway To The Danger Zone

Toddlers are ninjas who forgot how to ninja. They are frankly fucking dangerous and you need to know that. They will try to jump off couches, pull televisions down on their head, fling themselves into the tiger pit at the zoo. My son walked in here just 30 minutes ago and then tried to walk out of the room with his eyes covered. Why? I have no goddamn idea. He thought it was a good idea at the time. (He tripped on the dog, FYI.) Maybe he hoped he had superpowers, I dunno. Point is, you have to be ready for this level of constant danger in which they place themselves.

18. Poop And Pee Have Never Been So Important

Human waste has never been so important to you as when you are near to a toddler. If you have pets, you get a glimmer of this — difference is, if the dog deuces on the floor, the pooch doesn’t want to have a conversation about it after. But toddlers, man. They want to talk about it. They wanna look at it. And once you start potty training, it takes center stage. You have to get excited about poop because they’re excited about poop. They want to show it to you like it’s a fucking origami swan they just built. And you have to pretend like it’s just that magical.

19. Wildly Independent, Yet Utterly Incapable

I can’t figure toddlers out. I really can’t. One minute, they’re experts at everything. You try to do something complex for them — like, say, putting a DVD in the DVD player — and suddenly they’re all like I CAN DO IT STOP I’LL DO IT LEMME DO IT and you know they can’t but you let them try anyway because ha ha independence and next thing you know the house is on fire and the cat is on your head and there’s a dead homeless guy in your bathroom. But then when it comes to an utterly simple task — like, say, carrying a small toy ten feet from the kitchen to the living room — suddenly the toddler HAS NO IDEA HOW TO ACCOMPLISH THIS TASK. They’re dependent on you for all the wrong things and independent about the things they can’t do.

20. Quid Pro Quo, Clarice

“If you want my help cleaning up the living room, Clarice, I will first need you to tell me about the lambs. Have they stopped screaming? Also, I need chocolate milk. Quid pro quo, mother dear. Quid pro quo, yes or no?” Toddlers are constantly manipulating you. Maybe these little Hannibals don’t realize what they’re doing, but they’re totally trying to figure you out like a child-proof doorknob. They’ll find a way to make you turn. And when they do, you won’t realize it for an hour. And you’ll say, “I think I just got played,” and then you’ll look at the little person in the next room playing with her $4000 fully-functional LEGO TIE fighter and then, mmmyep, yes, yeah, you got played.

21. Your Things Are Their Things

The hat on your head. The TV in the living room. That bowl of cereal you just poured. It’s not yours. None of it is. You’re just borrowing it unknowingly from the toddler. The toddler will reclaim it in due time. It’s like protection money. A total racket, and yet — there’s your toddler, running around with your wallet and that nice bottle of wine and the keys to your car.

22. Some Toys Are Punishments For Your Transgressions In An Earlier Life And Oh, Everyone Wants Them To Have The Toy They Like, So That’s Gonna Be Tricky

The toddler likes XYZ (trucks, dolls, thermal detonators), and soon as all the other adults find out, that’s what they want to get for the toddler. Because they — understandably! — want the toddler to be happy. But this is how you end up with 37 toy tow trucks, or 64 teddy bears, or seven brand-new chainsaws. Nobody wants to risk trying to buy the kid something new because holy shit, what if the kid doesn’t like the new thing? (They surely envision that the toddler is quietly adding their name to an unfortunate list. “This is for the toy microscope, betrayer. ENJOY EXILE FROM MY LOVE.”) Worse, they’ll often end up procuring toys that prove to you how life is a joyless, shriek-warbling electronic hell-racket. Toys that beep and scream and honk and rev and play mindless meandering songs that press into your brainmeat like a pushing thumb. Or they’ll get him wildly inappropriate toys (“He likes trucks so I rented a U-Haul truck for him to drive, that’s cool, right?”) And it’s then you realize that toys for the tot are a realm of politics and preferences, of hurt feelings and emotional protectorates. You didn’t expect this. Aren’t toys supposed to be fun?!

23. They Always Know The Curse Word

If you say a curse word — even muttered, on accident — the toddler knows. They zero in on that like a shark hitting a wounded seal. They cling to the word, sloth-like, and they will immediately say it. And they’ll see your eyes go wide and they’ll say it again and again and you’ll tell them no but of course toddlers are anarchic contrarians and so it’s just game over, man, game over, so you might as well get used to your toddler saying “goddamn shit-eating cock-waffle” at daycare.

24. Parental Atavism

Listen. Lean in close. You want to hear a secret? Toddlers are a very fine reason to act cuckoo bananapants. They are an excuse to regress to levels of childish dumbassery and play the role of gamboling giant-size goofball in your own home. See, in public, you need to act like an adult. Wear pants and shoes and not pee on things and all that. But at home? With a toddler? You can devolve. You’re allowed to play with them on their level. You can put pots on your head and bang them with spoons. You can find conversations about poop and pee funny. You can perform silly walks and make funny voices and act like a general dipshit. You have that power. You are granted that advantage. Use it or lose it, because one day that kid’s gonna grow up and the window’s gonna close and you’re going to have to start acting like a proper adult again.

25. These Weird, Wonderful Little Snowflakes

Babies, by which I mean infants, are kinda universal. They have a few little curious eccentricities, but by and large the reason that you hear the same advice for babies is because babies are beholden to certain physical rules. Shushing and swaying and feeding and shaking — *is handed a note* — I mean not shaking? Whatever. Toddlers, though, aren’t that. Toddlers really are precious little snowflakes because they’re becoming people. Sure, they’re kinda maybe sometimes snot-shellacked sticky-fingered jam-handed snowflakes, but they’re snowflakes just the same. They’re all different and all the things I’m saying above may not actually apply. Parenting advice, too, is works for me, but may not work for you. They’re unpredictable, bewildering, brilliant little freakazoids, each as singular as a star in the sky. The best thing about them, perhaps, is how they let us — as adults — bear witness to a time that we cannot remember for ourselves. We can see how we became the people that we became in this volcanic, formative time.

Oh God, speaking of the whole “sure, you can use me as your personal bean bag”…When my daughter was almost 2, she was sitting in my lap while we were on the floor. Suddenly, without warning – i.e., normal toddler mode – she stood up and her head connected *so hard* with that area right under my chin, I saw stars. My teeth clacked together like my jaw was a spring and she’d released it. If my tongue had been a fraction of an inch to the left in my mouth, I would have bitten it off, I know it.

It’s one of those things I’ll never forget, right up there with her first word and her first day at school. Thankfully, there are no pictures of this particular event.

Chuck, my wife and I have been reading these toddler posts and laughing until our windows shake. We’re looking at that in a few years, and have already been getting a taste through my nephews and our friends’ kids.

I’m relieved to hear that there are varying dialects of Toddler. Hanging out with my nephew this summer there were times I stared into his giant eyes and thought, “Oh God, I have no idea what this kid is saying and I’m going to be a horrible parent.”

The truck thing too, man. My nephew’s thing is tractors. There’s a big construction project by my sister’s house, and every time he passes it he freaks out like he’s going by Jurassic Park and seeing resurrected monsters.

But his love for tractors has this surreal quality. One time I was playing with him and he kept telling me, “Tractor move da dirt.” And I was like, yes, you’re right. But why does tractor move the dirt? Is tractor building something?

“No,” he said. “Tractor move da dirt.” After a little more wheedling, he stared into my eyes like I was some backwoods hick that thinks the Sun moves around the Earth and insisted. “NO. NO BUILD. TRACTOR MOVE DA DIRT.”

And that’s when I realized that to him, moving dirt is all a tractor does. Tractors don’t move dirt [i]to achieve a purpose[/i], it’s just what they do. To my nephew, tractors are basically animals, they move dirt in the same way a Zebra eats grass or a bird flies.

He then picked up his Elmo plush and made Elmo eat a BRIO train. This was simultaneously the most glorious and disturbing image I’ve ever witnessed.

Laughed like a loon at all of these – still remember all of these things, along with ‘the starfish pose’ when we tried to strap him into a car seat/baby buggy when he didn’t want to be put there. Thanks for the happy crazy memories…

And the random (VERY LOUD) singing thing has definitely always been there – only now he’s seven he’s reached a new level of – um, ‘sophistication.’ Sometimes it’s sooo worth the eardrum assault, like his attempt to sing along to a famous Bruno Mars song (“Who cares Bay-beer’s… a thicker one of Mario!”) Others, like the following screeched into my left ear from a distance of about six inches – “MYSTERY NOISE, MYSTERY NOISE BEEP BEEEEPP!” …not so much.

This is so spot on. The thing about being toddler translators: I am seriously curious as to whether there have been scientific or linguistic studies on why this happens. Also: older siblings understand when the parents don’t. I think it’s because they haven’t forgotten the language of toddler like adults have, and they can add that extra level of translation. I also think that each family’s language is unique, which is why we don’t understand other people’s toddlers but we understand our own, because they are using a primitive form of our own language. Clearly I’ve thought about this too much.

Can I just say, I have a toddler just over two years old, and I am using your toddler posts as a glimpse into my not-so-very-far-off future. And I am terrified. As usual, you are right about everything regarding these little monsters.

This is brilliant and so funny. Thanks for letting me relive those precious, challenging, amazing years with my boy, who is now 17, and doesn’t say “Mommy, mommy, mommy, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK at me!!!!” anymore… I miss those years! But he’s incredibly lovable at 17, too. Just in a different, across-the-room kind of way….

Also, they do not possess a sense of time, in that the world obviously sprang into existence the moment they were born. Try to discuss mom and dad on a beach or at a bar before kids(aka BK). “Here is a picture of your dad when he was a boy” ” How come I’m not in the picture mommy?” Time didn’t exist before the kid. The universe is only 2-3 years old.

Oh gods yes. My daughter still does this at five. Or the flip side of it she talks in terms of when she was little as if it was decades ago rather than just a few months ago. When your whole existence is 5 years then 2.5 years is half a lifetime ago.

OMg. Spot on. Had me rolling in the floor. The poop, the curse word, the taking your stuff. Although my child is now 5 going on 6 and technically Pre-K…..I can tell you it doesn’t let up any. And the being quite thing….yes when they go quiet things are bad. Mine just scaled her doll house and broke the roof off. Why? No reason. Just wanted to sit there even though there were like 12 other places to sit. And I often wonder how much is nature vs nurture. My parents laugh and say we knew a little girl that acted like that. Cosmic payback? Or said something almost exactly like what I said at that age. Then proceeds to want to go outside or do some other activity that is so unlike me LOL.

Oh my this made me laugh, mine are 17, 10, 8 and 5 and many of these are still relevant.

On the plus side our youngest son {now 9} was terrible for bad language; at 3 he used to swear like a trooper. Now, if my husband or I swear in his presence, he stares witheringly at us and says “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that” before walking off.

I laughed. I cried. I identified SO HARD at this post.
Especially the redundancy part. Though, I find if I give a full and complete answer (as opposed to a distracted “Mmhmm” or head-nod) to whatever the question/comment (even if it was just “I found a stop sign!”) was, then I can derail the litany of repetition. Finally starting to derail the endless repeat of the same tv shows too. Thankfully, as I’ve already got half a draft of a socialogical/analytical dissertation of Curious George saved on my blog, and I’m about 2 repeated episodes away from posting it…

Thanks for the memories! What you said in part one about toddlers being proto teens is spot on. My daughter is as irritable as she was then as she goes through all the hormonal changes. However, with teenagers you have power you didn’t have before.

The router password.

Cross me kids and you’ll never get on Steam as long as you live. It’s amazing how the potential loss of internet access and their phone immediately brings about rational thought. “Me? I wasn’t slamming that door, it was the wind. Here, let me help you with that grocery bag”

Meanwhile I was talking with my son about his obsessive gaming and how he needs to dial it back because there isn’t a future in TF2. He listened carefully and I thought we had reached an agreement until he began negotiating weekday play times. What part of no gaming on school nights was unclear here? The exasperation on his face reminded me of the times when I used to turn off Oswald the Octopus because it was bed time. However, instead of loud shrieking I got undertone sullen muttering. Both of course mean the same thing. I suck.

Allow me to share an anecdote from my son’s toddlerhood illustrating a combo of #5, #6, and #23.

At two-and-a-half years, our son was finally speaking in sentences, but had retained the not uncommon habit of randomly omitting various consonant sounds within various words. Uttered in context, these words could easily be translated. For example, if he were pointing at a jar of cookies, he might have said, “Ookie! Ookie!” and be understood. However, “R” and “L” were pretty much non-existent.

So one day, my husband brings our darling son along to see a friend’s show at renowned art school. They arrive too early, but it’s beautiful spring day and so, my husband wanders the campus with our son to kill some time before the show opens.

My husband does a spit-take, of course. Then he realizes to what our dear son is referring. Just beyond the lawn full of lounging art school hipsters is a construction site that just so happens to be covered in little orange caution FLAGS.

Number 16. Just… yes. Or worse… when the crazy giggling filters into your brain from the next room. The insane, crazy-scientist giggling. Then you run through and find that the sippy cup you left your 10 month old baby with has been emptied (via sucking and spitting) over said baby by a cackling toddler. Or the baby has been buried up the neck in what was formerly a heap of clean, but unattended, washing.

For all the people saying that many still apply at 6/7… please be kidding.

Gods, now I’m thinking of how my parents must have felt with me. Those poor suckers. For number 1 to 24, all quite amusing and true, but the number 25? Very… I don’t know. Feels-y? Heart-warming? Pick something and insert here. I don’t have kids myself, but I can see how parents feel.